Once you get a Windows Phone you’ll probably create a Zune account with your Live account (i.e. Microsoft Passport). However, be very careful when you select the country of the marketplace you would like to bind it to, as you won’t be able to change it in the future, even if you physically move to a different supported country and would like to do it to make sure everything is up to date for you and your new location.

A least for now, if you move to a different country you’ll need to create a full new Zune account, which triggers creating a new Live account, because – from what I have seen – the Zune account is linked to the original Live account forever (i.e. there is no way you can remove an existing Zune account from the Live account, nor create multiple Zune accounts on the same Live account).

That means, of course, that besides any Marketplace content you may have downloaded and/or purchased (which could be OK to lose), you would also lose your connection to other, possibly very important items of your previous account, including e-mail, calendars, etc. There may be some workarounds to resolve this if you accept to add and/or link multiple Live accounts, and you can get partial access to your old account this way, but still, I expect that workarounds aren’t available for all applications anyway – for example, I don’t think SkyDrive application supports multiple Live accounts.

This is a big shame, and hopefully this will eventually change, but it’s not a sure fact, as the situation persisted for a very long time already (since a few years ago) – many users complained about this. Microsoft doesn’t seem to care about these people who move with a Windows Phone from one country to another, i.e. supporting them to move from one marketplace to another. Moreover, they won’t allow you to pay for purchasing content in one marketplace with a credit card emitted in the same country.

In my opinion it is imperative that Microsoft starts providing an option to change the country of any Zune account, at least if the user accepts to lose all previously downloaded/purchased Zune content from the initial Marketplace (including applications), but caring about not breaking the link to the original Live account. This should be a safe way for everybody, including Microsoft, who needs to respect legislation of multiple countries. (From this point of view, nothing would have been changed: it would be just like the user created a Zune account in a country he specifies, with the Agreement for that country, even if he or she would use the same original Live account.) Are they just too lazy to develop this feature? Or else, what do I miss here?

O “explicatie” de la MS am gasit la: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/zune/forum/account-pc/bug-cannot-change-country/f8e3654c-dd62-48f1-95b0-1b97776d20fa?page=2 :
“There is a licensing and rating component to this issue. The various nations that have access to the Marketplace all have different restrictions on the distribution of licensed media, and content ratings based on age. Certain countries have actually banned certain media and games, regardless of age. The only way we can be sure we are not violating local laws is to lock the profiles to the specific region information that was originally entered when the profile was created.
We cannot allow users to be able to change these settings, since some would do so in an attempt to subvert local conventions. I understand that you are not attempting to get around such restrictions personally, but you will be prevented from doing so nonetheless.
The only way I can imagine this policy ever changing is if every country in the world adopted standard licensing policies for all media and games.
Thank you for consulting Microsoft Answers.
Regards,
DavidKH.”

That’s exactly what I’ve found myself. But I don’t find their explanations satisfactory simply because a physical user can always have as many Live accounts he or she wants, and have them bound to different Zune accounts, and therefore it’s possible that they are bound to different countries; tehnically Microsoft cannot control that a user specifies the country correctly, so simply requiring this in the EULA should be enough (as for other services they provide).

Right now, if the user resets his or her phone he or she can change the account bound to the phone and therefore he or she can migrate to another marketplace, and possibly never login again with his old account. So in theory, my proposition isn’t that different than what we have. Of course, Microsoft should do some work to “archive” (or remove, why not?) application ratings and so on (performed with some account at one time) when the account coultry would get the country and markeplace changed, but beside this, nothing else is different.

I understand that the country change couldn’t be performed seemlessly, i.e. preserving applications and content, but that’s “OK”. I just want to remove the “forever” link between the Live account and Marketplace country settings.

Alternatively they could start supporting adding multiple Zune accounts to the same Live account. This way all data of one account in one country would be preserved when changing the Zune account to a different one, but using the same e-mail address (to not force the end user to get a completely new Live account when he or she moves in a different country).

I cannot find a reason for not doing either of the above, except for prioritization of features (i.e. lazyness) of the Microsoft team. Technically it should be possible to resolve the issue with little work from their side.

PS: Reading the forums, I find more and more Windows Phone users each day that simply move from one country to another (immigration is so common in 21st century!) and as they find about this “issue”, they start moving to different platforms, such as Android or iPhone. Some decide to keep the Windows Phone but they don’t purchase any content anymore from the Marketplace (as they cannot do it, as they don’t have their old country credit cards anymore!). They are downgraded to use only the new applications that can be freely downloaded from the old marketplace, and purchase new music and other content from external sites, eventually linking the files to their phone from Zune software on the PC. Anyway they choose, Microsoft started to lose money in favor of their competition, in my opinion just because of their lazyness. I expect this will change eventually, despite their current opinion. It’s just not logical to be it as it is, and generally, Microsoft has been a logical thinker in the past. I hope this attribute will never get lost – it’s something I have always liked them for!

Here is a comment posted today on the Windows phone user voice forum. I find it more and more common among users, especially in the EU, but not only here: “I will not buy any Microsoft product until this issue is resolved (especially Windows Phone, which I actually intended to buy within the next few weeks). I am an European citizen and I have freedom of movement within the EU. For me, it is unacceptable having to create a new Live-ID when I move to another country for work, which sometimes happens.”

And more bad news, also posted in the same forum today: “Windows 8 [Store] has exactly the same issue. It uses the same service account as Zune/Xbox Live/Windows phone, so you can’t change your country in your Windows 8 account if you move.”

A possible solution for getting Microsoft resolve this issue sooner rather than later (or never) would be to complain about it to the appropriate authorities in your country, as indicated in another forum post: “Microsoft seems to think that it can continue to ignore individual users over this issue, but if EU Data Protection Authorities are made aware of it, through our complaints, then perhaps Microsoft will get prodded into taking some action to resolve it”. Find more information and links on: http://www.itisourdata.com.

From the European Directive 95/46/EC, Article 12(b): “Member States shall guarantee every data subject [EU consumer] the right to obtain from the controller [Microsoft]: as appropriate the rectification, erasure or blocking of data the processing of which does not comply with the provisions of this Directive, in particular because of the incomplete or inaccurate nature of the data“.

I can confirm one can change the country provided that he or she can get access to a physical XBox console for more than 30 days:
– download the gamertag profile of the Microsoft Account to the console;
– wait for 30 days (required by XBox policy);
– in the meantime, create a secondary Microsoft Account;
– move the XBox gamertag from the primary account to the secondary account using the console’s Account menu;
– finally, on Windows Phone bound to the primary account, open Marketplace and the country selection will appear again; note: a new gamertag will be issued for your account, too, and you’ll lose XBox achievemenets, etc.

It seems that at this time, it is technically possible only if you can get access to an XBox console, so I foresee that eventually the procedure will be available for all users and without the 30 days delay, especially as the Support forums might get country change requests too often. (Hopefully.)